Yesterday our copy of Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The Chosen Collection—all seven seasons—arrived. (It’s supposedly a limited edition, but I don’t see anything to that effect on our box.) Since we’d been listening to the soundtrack of “Once More With Feeling” on the drive home last night, we immediately put on the episode.

I’ve been slowly working my way through the Comic Cavalcade Archives. I’m determined to read the whole thing, but I have to take it in small doses. Partly the target audience is much younger than me, partly the storytelling (and art) I’m used to is much different, and of course partly it’s a very different time. It was the middle of World War II, and half the stories involved fighting Nazi spies or, in some cases, wreaking havoc in Germany itself. (The Ghost Patrol should have been able to take Hitler out on their own, but they seemed more interested in sabotage and practical jokes.) The original setup for Wonder Woman was that she left Paradise Island to help America defeat the Axis!

The Golden-Age Flash hunt continues. I’m now up to three issues of All-Flash with an issue of Flash Comics on its way. So far I’ve discovered that the Turtle didn’t have a costume the first time he appeared. He was just a guy in a green suit who used slowness against a guy who was used to moving fast. Next up: the original Thorn. I’ve bid on a lot of eBay auctions, expecting to win only a fraction of them. Everywhere else I look online, people are selling collector-grade books at much higher prices. I just want to read the original stories, write down who appears, and scan the occasional panel that I’m going to clean up anyway.

Amazon has finally put a discount on the Golden Age Flash Archives vol.2, so I’ve pre-ordered it. While there I looked around on my wish list and noticed that the Mirrormask DVD page (which still shows the wrong date) is recommending, “Buy this DVD with Serenity (Widescreen Edition) DVD ~ Joss Whedon today!” That seems like an appropriate pairing!

Neil Gaiman writes that Amazon lists 2025 as the release date for the MirrorMask DVD.

Twenty years seems a long way away, but Sony are probably just scheduling it that far off because during the Great iPod Content Uprising Years of 2013-2024 people aren’t going to have much time for things like actually watching films, what with gathering together in places where the iPodPeople can’t get them and shooting them in the brain and all that stuff, and it’s only after the Man-Droid-iPod Peace Treaties of 2024 that anyone gets back to the serious business bringing out DVDs of long-forgotten movies.

“Alternately,” he adds, “I suppose it could be an Amazon.com typo and MirrorMask could be coming out on the last day of this year. That would be nice.”

It’s refreshing when a movie you’ve anticipated for years actually lives up to your expectations. It’s unprecedented when it happens twice in one weekend. MirrorMask and Serenity were both amazing.

The MirrorMask theater listing looks like a tour schedule, with the film opening in a few more cities each week. Unfortunately, at least some theaters that have it now won’t have it by next weekend, so we’re going to have to catch it again one night this week. Then we’ll seek Serenity again on the weekend. Somewhere in there we’ll find time for the other movies we wanted to see.

We’ve got a more thorough review of Serenity planned…

MirrorMask PosterNeil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s fantasy film MirrorMask opens tomorrow in limited release. Inspired by such classics as The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, MirrorMask tells the story of Helena, a girl who wants to run away from the circus and join real life, but gets trapped in an otherworldly realm separated into kingdoms of light and dark. I, uh, may have mentioned it before a few times… 😉

Word is that if the movie does well enough this weekend, Sony is considering giving it a wider release.

The Beat has a nice run-down of the film [archive.org]. The AV Club has interviews with Gaiman and McKean, and Time magazine has an interview with Gaiman and Joss Whedon, who has his own film coming out this weekend. (Gonna be busy!) Neil Gaiman’s own blog links to more press.

Oh, yeah, one more thing to do this weekend: Stop by a bookstore and pick up Anansi Boys, which apparently hit #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list. Somehow, despite reading about all the signing tours, I had it in my head that it didn’t come out until next month. But Gaiman is one of the very few authors whose books I buy in hardcover instead of waiting for paperback.

MirrorMask PosterThe bad news: MirrorMask is only opening in selected theaters on September 30.

The good news: Those theaters include Edwards University in Irvine. (I’m not sure where the Landmark Nuart Theater is, but it’s the only one in LA.)

According to Neil Gaiman, the amount of business it does during the first week will determine whether it gets a wider release.

With Serenity opening the same weekend, we’re going to be awfully busy…